


When Dusk Ends

by CosmicZombie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-11
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-11 22:12:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3334661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CosmicZombie/pseuds/CosmicZombie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was oddly content lying there with Draco Malfoy, watching the sunlight drain away along with the colours of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Dusk Ends

**Author's Note:**

> I've been a huge Drarry fan for ages, but this is the first fanfic I've actually posted anywhere. It's a two-part fic; the second part should be up soon. Hope you enjoy it! Feedback is amazing.<3

The wispy clouds were tipped with pink, and the light was going out of all the colours. Harry was lying on his back on the cool grass, watching the shapes of the summer dusk collect and disperse slowly. It was peaceful, silent. As if there was no one else in the world where the pale golden sky was bruised with purple clouds and opulent leaves rustled overhead, heavy with dusk. Since the start of sixth year, Harry had taken to staying out after hours in the grounds, soothed by the simple solitude of it.

 

He found that thoughts were somehow freer, less painful, as the time faded from day to night. When the pollen weighed down the shadowy leaves which were barely green against the twilit sky, his thoughts flowed more easily, as if the half-light allowed the ones he usually kept shut away to float through into the front of his mind and just be. Thoughts somehow just didn’t seem to matter so much when the day was almost over. Harry could allow them to unravel until the sky was completely black and the stars were out, simple and pure in the turmoil of the clouds, and the dusk had ended.

 

It was inexplicably calming to have a sliver of a day where none of it needed to matter, just for a moment— the war; the prophecy; a boy with grey eyes who was fading further and further away from the sneering first year Harry had first met in Madam Malkin’s all those years ago. The darkness of the imminent war was reaching into everything and everyone Harry knew and changing it all. It was overwhelmingly calming to just lie on the cool summer grass, listening to the ripple of the lake and just be separate from everything else for a few moments.  

 

Suddenly, Harry realised that the heady smell of pollen and shadowed sunlight was being infiltrated by a sharper scent— like the tang of apples in sugar. He leant up on his elbows, untidy hair tickling the frames of his glasses as he gazed across the grounds, his eyes immediately coming to rest on the gnarled oak tree guarding the rippling indigo water of the lake less than a metre away. Harry froze instantly, heart plummeting in his chest. He wasn’t alone.

 

Draco Malfoy was sitting against the knotted tree trunk, staring out across the lake. He looked different to how he did during school hours, somehow. He was still far too thin, his face pale and drawn with dark circles shadowing his eyes, but Harry thought that he looked calmer, somehow— a world apart from the anguished, scared person he seemed to have become since September. His Slytherin tie was loose around his neck, and his platinum hair was no longer slicked back, but curling slightly at the nape of his neck in soft waves of blonde. Despite the dark circles that still hung heavily under his eyes, he looked almost as peaceful as the surroundings, his green eyes glittering almost blue in the weak sunset that skittered across the lake.

 

“Malfoy?” Harry ventured uncertainly, his voice sounding too loud in the silence of the twilit grounds around them. However, Malfoy himself didn’t seem in the least bit startled by Harry’s voice, merely turning to look at him, grey eyes unreadable.

 

“Hello, Potter,” he replied, simply.

 

Harry sat up properly, running a hand through his untidy hair. “What are you doing here?” he asked, feeling distinctly uncomfortable under the other boy’s inscrutable gaze.

 

“Why do you come down here every night?” Malfoy evaded the question, tilting his head slightly as he continued to survey Harry, who didn’t know quite how to react. Malfoy was looking at him entirely differently to the way in which he normally did; scornfully or mockingly— or in the case of this school year, barely at all. Harry couldn’t remember Malfoy looking at him at all since sixth year had started, but he was looking at him now, grey eyes carefully unreadable but also intently curious. It made Harry feel uncomfortable, like Malfoy could see the thoughts which had been floating so easily around Harry moments before.

 

“I…I like this time of day,” Harry mumbled eventually, straightening his glasses and studying the other boy apprehensively. He felt taken off-guard; this was his spot, the place he came to when he wanted to be alone. But now he wasn’t alone.

 

“Me too,” Malfoy agreed, resting his head back against the tree trunk and gazing back out across the darkening waters of the lake. A haze of midges shimmered above the rippling waters, glowing almost golden in the last of the sunlight, and a balmy breeze gently ruffled the grass. “What is it that you like about it, Potter?” he asked after several moments, not averting his gaze from the lake.

 

Harry swallowed, staring at the ground. “I don’t know,” he replied awkwardly, plucking the flowering grass that grew all around them. “What’s it to you, anyway?”

 

The words came out more harshly than he’d intended, and Harry winced at them.

 

However, Malfoy didn’t, merely shrugging in response. “I was just curious,” he said lightly, but Harry didn’t miss the way his clasped hands tightened ever so slightly.

 

There was a long pause, the long shadows beginning to eat into the remaining glimmers of sun.

 

“It’s just…it’s easy to think— about anything. It doesn’t seem so difficult,” Harry answered eventually, looking back up from the flowering grass.

 

I agree,” Malfoy replied softly, tearing his gaze away from the lake and instead focusing on Harry. “I think it’s because at this time, the day is almost over, so it doesn’t matter what we think about, because we know that as soon as it’s completely dark, it’s all over— and tomorrow we can pretend we never thought it. It’s close enough to tomorrow to not be counted as real. Dusk is like a kind of limbo between two worlds.”   

 

Harry stared at him. It was the most he’d ever heard Malfoy say to him, and he found he couldn’t reply to it, because the other boy had described how Harry felt so exactly that any other words were irrelevant. Instead, he just nodded slowly, not taking his eyes from Malfoy’s, until their gaze was broken by the latter looking away.

 

There was a long silence, heavy with the sunlight of the day, but it was somehow peaceful too. After a few moments, Harry returned to lying on his back, staring up at the changing sky and letting the gentle summer breeze dust over him.

 

“What do you think about here that you don’t in the daytime, Potter?” Malfoy’s voice was a lot closer this time, like he was sitting right next to where Harry was lying.

 

“You wouldn’t want to know,” Harry mumbled, closing his eyes against the shadows taking over the sky which had seemed so endlessly blue.

 

There was more silence, broken only by the gentle noise of the lake lapping against its banks, and after a few moments, Harry became distinctly aware that Malfoy was lying down beside him. He could smell the subtle tang of his aftershave, feel the slight warmth emanating from the other body lying beside him, and see the gentle rise and fall of Malfoy’s chest out of the corner of his eye.

 

“I would,” Malfoy said quietly, startling Harry.

 

Harry opened his mouth to say something, but then stopped, because he wasn’t sure what he really wanted to say. It was oddly content, lying there, watching the sky fade from blue to purple to ebony and letting the sunlight drain away alongside the colours of the world with Draco Malfoy lying beside him.

 

“I wish it was always like this,” he found himself murmuring eventually. “Like the world is on pause.”

 

Overhead, the last of the summer swifts dipped and danced through the bruising of the clouds.

 

“Me too,” Malfoy sighed quietly. “No consequences. Nothing to fear.”

 

Harry could hear the sadness in the other boy’s voice, and the anguish of it touched him unexpectedly, making him turn his head so he was looking right at Malfoy, whose skin was so pale it looked almost colourless beside the sadness in his eyes.

 

“What are you scared of?” Harry found himself asking quietly.

 

“What are you scared of, Potter?” Malfoy countered softly, eyes not leaving Harry’s. Their grey was the biggest shadows the dusk was casting. He looked like a completely different person from the smug, sneering first year Harry had met— and the closed-up, scared sixth year Harry had come to know him as. He looked more real than Harry had ever known him to be.

 

He wasn’t sure what made him do it, but Harry found himself reaching up and tentatively touching the sharp angle of Malfoy’s jaw, watching the other boy’s eyes flutter closed as he did so. Malfoy’s skin was soft under the hint of stubble and the sharpness of his jaw line, ad Harry watched him exhale unevenly as he cautiously let his fingers trail up into Malfoy’s hair.

 

“…Potter?” Malfoy whispered, breath coming out in a rush, eyes still shut.

 

Harry hesitated, heart pounding, hand still in Malfoy’s hair.

 

“I’m scared of lots of things,” he admitted shakily. “I’m scared of losing people I care about. I’m scared about the war. I’m scared I might not be as brave as everyone seems to think. I’m scared that no one knows who I really am, myself included. I’m scared because I know the dusk always ends and I don’t want it to.”

 

 Malfoy opened his eyes again, the intensity of their grey making Harry’s breathing falter.

 

“It hasn’t yet,” he murmured, and Harry could taste the words they were so close. His hand tightened in Malfoy’s hair, feeling his heart thudding faster still in his chest.

 

“What are you scared of?” Harry repeated quietly, lost in the eyes which were both devastatingly grey and full of colour. He could feel the other boy’s breath against his lips, taste the apprehension on each exhale.

 

“Tomorrow,” he replied simply, eyes searching Harry’s.

 

And then they were kissing, Harry’s hands entangled in Draco’s hair, Draco’s hands tentatively cupping his jaw. Harry couldn’t think straight. His heart was pounding wildly as he felt Draco’s eyes flutter closed and pulled him closer.

 

It wasn’t like Harry had imagined. It more urgent, Draco’s hands fierce where they held his jaw, their mouths working together softly, deeply. Harry let out an involuntary gasp as he felt Draco’s tongue brush his lips, and pulled the Slytherin closer, kissing back more intently and feeling the other boy groan softly against his lips. Everything else seemed to melt away around them; the rapidly darkening sky, the haze of midge shimmering over the lake, the first stars peeking shyly out of the beginnings of night.

 

“Draco…” Harry breathed against the Slytherin’s lips when they pulled away slightly for air, heart pounding wildly against the confines of his ribs.

 

“I know,” Malfoy murmured breathlessly, moving down to press his lips warmly against Harry’s neck, sucking just above the hollow of his collar bone and eliciting a moan from the Gryffindor.

 

Harry cupped Draco’s jaw, pulling him back into a fierce kiss, feeling the Slytherin kiss back equally urgently, his hands round Harry’s waist, pulling their bodies together as they kissed desperately, like stealing kisses from someone else’s dream. Inhibitions were lost as their kissing grew more heated, breaking apart more frequently for air and bumping foreheads and noses as they tried desperately to continue the kiss as Draco pushed Harry onto his back, pinning him down amongst the colourless grass and continuing to kiss him hungrily, hands tugging at his hair.

 

Harry kissed back urgently, sliding his hands down to rest on Draco’s waist, trying to remember how to breathe as Draco’s tongue slid against his, hot and needy in his mouth, making Harry groan softly and pull the other boy closer, sliding his hands under the fabric of Draco’s school shirt, feeling the soft skin and bumps of his spine. It was intoxicating. Harry couldn’t get enough of the feeling of Draco’s lips urgent against his, the feel of Draco’s body pressing against him, the feeling that it was forever and the blink of an eyelid at the same time. It consumed him completely, just as the potency of the dusk had done, but it still wasn’t enough. He broke away, gasping for breath in the dwindling light, grappling with the buttons of Draco’s shirt as the Slytherin dipped down, biting and sucking at Harry’s throat in a way that made Harry bite down on his lip in order to keep himself from moaning as he fisted Draco’s shirt, arching up into the angry purple bruises the Slytherin was leaving on his neck.

 

“Take…take it off…” Harry breathed unevenly when Draco came up for air, running his tongue lightly over the marks he’d just made. Harry grabbed him, pushing him upright so that they were both sitting, facing each other, breathing hard.

 

“You too,” Draco said breathlessly as he finished unbuttoning his shirt and tugged it off, throwing it to the side. Harry froze in the act of unbuttoning his own shirt, staring at Draco in the dim light of the stars. He was kneeling in front of Harry, platinum blonde hair tousled, lips swollen, chest heaving.

 

Harry stared at the Dark Mark burnt into the skin of Draco's left forearm, and his heart slid sickeningly to a halt. 


End file.
